


Enough

by alyse



Category: Legend of the Seeker
Genre: Community: fandom_stocking, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-31
Updated: 2011-12-31
Packaged: 2017-10-28 14:11:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/308695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alyse/pseuds/alyse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some things are simply enough.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Enough

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Trobadora](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trobadora/gifts).



> Written as a fandom_stocking stuffer for trobadora. Merry Yule! I finally managed to write you Cara/Dahlia ::g::
> 
> Many thanks to Aithine for the beta.

It's dark in the cellar and in the darkness there are rats that squeak and scamper and bite. The thought of them makes Cara's skin crawl and the sight of them always makes her sick to her stomach, but not seeing them is much, much worse. In fact, not seeing them as they crawl around, grey against grey and made bold by the darkness, but only hearing them as they chitter to each other is the worst thing of all. Cara knows that they're out there, somewhere in the dark, just waiting for her to drop her guard.

She curls up as small as she can and tucks her feet under her so that the rats can't nip at her toes, can't snap at and snack on her flesh. The thought makes her shudder, makes her sick and scared, and she'd squeak herself, shake with fear if she didn't think that the Mistresses would know that she was weak. The agiel the Mistresses gave her burns and sparks and has a bite all of its own when it touches her flesh, but it's still better to be bitten by it than the teeth of a rat, and she pulls it closer to her, holding on tight until her jaw aches from clenching her teeth against the pain.

Dahlia curls up next to her and watches the darkness with a fierce gaze. She can make out Dahlia's shape in the dim light spilling through the cracks in the wooden door, and even if she couldn't, even if Dahlia's eyes didn't gleam and glitter when she shifts and the light falls on her, Cara would know she was there.

Dahlia holds onto her, holds onto Cara as tightly as she grips her own agiel, and Cara shifts closer to the warmth of Dahlia's body, listening for a scuttle, for a squeak. Holds on, holds on to Dahlia as tightly as she can until her fingers ache as fiercely as her jaw.

But it's never enough.

-o-

Cara has her duty, and it defines her. She exists to serve the Lord Rahl, and she lives to protect her sisters. There is nothing else and there never can be. She doesn't think about it, doesn't dwell on the things she will never have or focus on the things she has now. It's not the Mord Sith way, and Cara embraces her life with something close to passion. It fills her days and it fills her nights.

Even when she falls fertile and bears the Lord Rahl a son, she knows her duty and embraces it willingly. It is a great honour to be so blessed, and she stiffens her spine and pulls on the red leathers that have been altered to fit her altered frame.

She doesn't cry out during labour and she doesn't cry at all when they take her child away from her. She has served the Lord Rahl and served him well; he is pleased with her, and his pleasure is a fleeting and hard-won thing. Her arms do not feel empty when her child is gone - how can they when Dahlia can finally come back to her bed? And if she holds tight to Dahlia in the dark of the night, if she curls up into Dahlia's warmth and lets the rhythm of Dahlia's breathing lull her down into sleep, Dahlia never tells.

She has her duty, and her duty will have to be enough. What else is there for a Mord Sith?

-o-

Then she falls from grace, falls away from her sisters, and Richard and Kahlan and Zedd pick her up. She's not broken - she's never broken - but...

She sleeps by the fire to the sound of Zedd's snoring echoing in the dark, takes her turn at watch and pretends she doesn't see how Kahlan and Richard curl up side by side, or how their hands reach out in the still of the night, fingers tangling together in their sleep. She grows used to them, their idiosyncrasies, their foibles, their unspoken communication. She learns to speak it, too, over time, that language that is theirs and no one else's, familiarity breeding anything but contempt.

She goes to sleep surrounded by her family, and wakes up the same, and it's enough.

Most of the time.

-o-

The world changes, moves on and Cara moves with it. Zedd thinks that she doesn't remember the worlds that were before.

Zedd's wrong. She does.

-o-

They visit Stowcroft again once Richard has finally claimed the D'Haran throne and this time there is no trial waiting. Grace is pleased to see her, Grace's husband less so, but Cara doesn't really care. She loves her sister and can tell her that now, in actions if still not in words, but Grace is a constant and it's not her face that Cara seeks out first in the market place.

Some things change, but some things stay the same, and Stowcroft was always home to more than Cara.

She's always left the village alone, first as a child stolen away and then as an adult, walking away from her sister before meeting her found family waiting for her just outside the village perimeter.

This time she doesn't leave empty handed or empty hearted, and it's not Zedd's heavy snores from across the fire that she focuses on.

Dahlia's breathing is as light and even as Cara not-quite remembers, and her body is just as warm and fits Cara's just as well. She curls her arm around Dahlia's waist and pulls her closer, and Dahlia shifts and settles against her in a way that's both familiar and new.

Cara closes her eyes and breathes in her scent, the one that speaks of sunlight and green grass, of autumn's plenty and of playing in the hay. But not all of the memories come from childhood, and not all of the memories are really hers.

Cara doesn't care about that either. What matters is this, the feel of Dahlia (back) where she belongs, the shape of Dahlia in the darkness when she sleeps, and the brightness of Dahlia's eyes when she's awake. Cara's never been one to dwell on what ifs and what might bes; she makes things happen, usually to other people.

She's made this happen, too, and it's finally enough.


End file.
